From Gambella to Shabal with Getinet and Eshetu (see map 8). There we stop again at the taj house of Harme Eshetu to renew our contact to Ambissa and to continue with our inquiries regarding Anfillo/Mao.
Harme Eshetu sends for Ambissa and fills the time that we spend waiting for him with her own insights about the Mao. She says that the Mao came here from Kaffa at the time of Ahmad Granye. They were refugees from the Granye wars (1526/27-1542). (This explains the linguistic similarities between the Mao and the Kaffa languages. On the other hand, nobody knows how far Kaffa-like Omotic languages extended to the north and north-west before the Oromo expansion which followed the Granye wars. Oromo speakers might as well have interrupted a 'wider Kaffa' linguistic continuum which spread all the way from Kaffa to Anfillo.)
Recently, the Anfillo have sided with the OLF. Because of their pro-Oromo stand (which, because it is oriented towards the OLF, helps little with the present OPDO regional government [OPDO = Oromo People’s Democratic Organisation]), they were disappointed not to have gained a recognised status as an ethnic group. After our last visit, Harme Eshetu told her Anfillo guests that, now that outsiders who are interested in Anfillo have come, they should renew their efforts to gain recognition. They replied that they had given up that struggle, but still felt strongly enough to want to prevent any other minority in the area from achieving a recognised status. Nobody should fare better than they did.
The Mao in the north, beyond the Didessa River, are the descendants of children who were taken there to work. Since many Anfillo in the time before Haile Selassie were too poor to pay taxes (gibir), they had to give away children instead. (What Malaaku says below about the northern Mao – see entry from November 2001, 18 – is both more plausible and in agreement with Grottanelli [1940].)
In spite of her own name, Zawditu, and that of her son, Eshetu (not to be confused with our driver of the same name), both of which are Christian names, Harme Eshetu is a Muslim. Now that Ramadan has started, she is fasting. One wonders how that can be reconciled with her profession as a taj seller.
When Ambissa arrives, he agrees to come with us to Muggi. We take him to his house so that he can change cloths. Photograph: his house (black/white; slide).
Ambissa’s house
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Ambissa tells us that people envy him because of his contact to us and because of the things he does to earn money. Since our last visit, he has discovered a plant with harmful magical effects, which somebody had planted in his garden. He uprooted it and showed it to the Administrator. People get such things from a sorcerer for money. If one finds the sorcerer and gives him more money than the original client, he dilutes the evil influence of the object. For 'sorcerer' Ambissa uses the Amharic/Mao term t’ankwey, which he says is equivalent to Oromo qallu. (The qallu of the Boran, which is a recognised office with public functions, is, of course, something quite different.)
We put up in the Hoteela Shufeerotaa again. After lunch there is a heavy downpour of rain. We decide that people have probably withdrawn into their houses to sleep and that there is not much for us to do right now. Ambissa says that spending the night here is no problem for him. So, we decide also to get some sleep and to try to get an interview in the late afternoon. After the nap Ambissa suddenly declares that he has to go home. He has a kalashnikov (klash) in his house which was given to him during the polio vaccination campaign, when he served as a record keeper and a guard as they went from village to village giving injections. He did two years of military service in the late Derg period. Now the klash is in his house, where there is nobody apart from an irresponsible minor, who might easily be cheated out of it. He now wants to find a ride back home and then join us again tomorrow. We have to let him go. He actually does turn up the next day, telling us that, in the evening, he couldn’t get a ride and had to walk for 2 ½ hours.
Getinet and I go to visit the old Guddata again (see entry from November 2001, 9). On the way we meet Nasir again, who also helped us last time (see entry from November 2001, 8). He joins us this time, too.
This time we manage to keep the crowd of children at a distance. The interview works well (videotape). Guddata explains that the sacrifices, which he had started to describe at the beginning of November, were carried out by Fitawrari Gimbi Gaayo, the local Oromo ruler, for the benefit of all inhabitants of his realm. Also, Dichino, the local Mao administrator, made such sacrifices, using maldocho, a big knife. Special songs were sung on the occasion of these sacrifices. The sacrifices rotated among different sites within the region: Balla, Choliqam, Dalla, and Wawwi. Their interval was 7-10 days. People took away small pieces of fat, which would then be burned in their home areas.
The Mao had sacrificial rituals of their own in the old days, but not on the same scale. They were carried out by local groups, whom they were meant to benefit. They used to pray to a Sky God, the "Father of the Land", and they believed the "Wind" to be His messenger and to convey His blessings. The "Good Wind" brings fertility, but the ultimate power is with the "One God" (Waaqa) (44:24:19). The Mao also had ritual specialists and office holders. The purpose of the rituals was to ask God to bless the land and people with fertility and to purify them. Nowadays, these beliefs have become diluted, and fertility has been diminished as a result.
Now fertility is suffering because of the disappearance of this power arrangement (44:30). Now there is no common thinking and unity around the good old beliefs that brought wealth. What we see today is the division and multiplication of religion(s): Christianity and Islam, which again are internally divided.
Among their descent units, Mao distinguish between angaaf/manda, i.e., 'firstborn'/'later born' or senior/junior. The segments of the Mao include Shefero, Balla, Yoyyo, Gongo, Dolla, Yebbo, Mechedo, Yebetto, and Uddo.
The levels of political power and the office holders that Guddata remembers are: Gimbi (regional), Dichiino (Mao), and Dibaba (son of Dichino, local level). Dibaba’s son Kabadda is still alive.
Places of the Mao (enumeration starts at 44:55 on the tape; names of rulers presumably stand for their realms): Durii, Abajaji, Fitawrari Sokotocho, Abbadanno, Abdisa Fayisa, Dakarje, Garje, Gurii, Goppo, Tabor, Ejemasi, Yebba, Gambella (?!), and Kashimaji. The areas around these places are the original homeland of the Mao. Then the Busaso, an Oromo clan, expanded into the area. At first, they came to hunt, which they did with the permission of Dichino, the local Mao ruler. The whole area below Choliqam was filled by Mao.
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Tape: |
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Under Dichino there were the following rulers (names of rulers or levels of administration?): Gedarasho, Girinasho, Sichirasho, Abiqajo, and subjects (ummata). Main leaders were Tokkoo, Gosharo, and Yebeto (1:00:35).
Guddata confirms that children were given away in lieu of paying taxes (1:01:15).
The Italians tried to abolish the social inequalities in the region. The Commander of the area once called all people for a meeting and pointed out the many different colours and colour patterns of the local cows. He then asked the audience whether the meat of the cows, under the skin, also differed from animal to animal. They answered in the negative: the meat was the same. So why, the Commander continued, should the people of different colours (the "black" Mao, the "brown" Oromo) be treated differently? He also made first an Oromo and then a Mao climb a high chair and then concluded that both were able to do the same thing.
Since the Italian period, the majority of the Mao had converted to Catholicism. The next in order of numerical importance are the Muslims. Protestant denominations are now growing. Recently, the number of Orthodox Christians has also increased.
Before the coming of the Oromo, the Mao believed in the "Father of Everything" who brought the "Good Wind" that provided everything and protected the people against evil of all kinds.
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Some Mao expressions: |
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Guddata was born as a Catholic Christian. He married after the Italian period. He has three daughters and five sons. He has married twice. His current wife was born a Muslim, but converted to Christianity at the time of their marriage. One of his sons is a Muslim. We see him coming home with a koofiya/t’aaaqiiya (Islamic skull-cap) on his head.
Guddata regards himself as blessed by God. He has not harmed anyone. He did not collaborate with the Italians, and he did not become a banda (a member of local troops under the Italians). Now he has divided all his land among his children, all of whom live in this area as farmers.
A young man of the Tigray family who owns the Hoteela Shufeerotaa is called Gashaw. He was born and brought up here. A year ago he went with a group of people deep into the forest to track a thief. They found him, finally, on a watch tower, i.e., a raised hide built for guarding the fields against birds, listening to music on the stolen tape recorder. They arrested him and brought him back with all of his loot. On that occasion Gashaw met some Anfillo who scarcely spoke Oromo and who were clad only with loin cloths. They were short and muscular and armed with spears. Gashaw says that some Mao live in caves. (Ambissa, who recently travelled through the area on the vaccination campaign, says that, in the remote areas, there are also younger people who still speak Mao, but he denies that there are Anfillo who do not speak Oromo.) The Mao language can, according to Gashaw, also be heard on the market in Muggi.